SAILSBURY MILLS — Trains sidelined by Hurricane Sandy returned to the Port Jervis line Monday and received a muted welcome from commuters who had weathered her sister Irene only 14 months ago.

"Have you seen the schedule?" said Paul Meshirer of Cornwall, who drove to his job in the city last week. "It's a disaster. But I'm going to see how it goes today before I switch to the bus."

"All those extra stops in Jersey will make our commute 45 minutes longer — one way," said Jean Salamone of Washingtonville as she and her husband and niece waited in their car for the train.

And that was an optimistic estimate, based solely on the interim schedule, and not considering the crush that would greet them at Secaucus Junction, where NJ Transit was going to be able to operate only 13 of its usual 63 trains into Pennsylvania Station in Midtown.

The barely audible announcement that the first of the morning's four rush-hour trains, the 4:24 a.m. from Port Jervis, was running late by as much as 25 minutes, sent up howls of protest.

One commuter standing on the platform saw the delay as a sign that the Port Jervis line, now and forever, was the "bastard stepchild" of the transit system, and another as a sign that she'd get to her job in Brooklyn only in time to turn around and come home again.

"It's nice we've got something to get us back," said Greg Smith of New Windsor, who defected to the Hudson line after Irene, "but you'd think it could be something a little more efficient."

At Harriman, the busiest station on the Port Jervis line, the parking lot was largely empty after the second of the morning's trains departed.

"I don't know where everybody is," said Daniel Betancourt of Monroe, who was waiting not for the next train but for a carpool.

Betancourt explained that he and co-workers, all Metro-North regulars, would probably drive to their office in Jersey City, N.J., until train service was restored to Hoboken.

The park-and-rides in the Route 17 corridor, meanwhile, were full or close enough by 6:15 a.m., and Short Line buses were leaving customers behind to wait for the next bus or the next bus after that.

In Chester, commuters in the bus queue voiced frustration at the pressure Irene had put on parking — some Metro-North customers never went back to the train — and worried that Sandy would compound the situation.

"If you're not here by 5:30, you can't be certain of getting a spot," said a Warwick man who has walked to the lot since he checked into a Chester motel after the storm left him without power at home.

The first post-Sandy rush ultimately overwhelmed NJ Transit's partial — and fragile — restoration of train service. Laurel Williams of Middletown said it took her four hours to get to Penn Station, almost half of it waiting for a train in Secaucus amid staggering overcrowding.

But New York commuters, whether they were on the bus or on the train, were still careful to modulate their complaints with sympathy for New Jersey's suffering at the hands of Sandy.

"Progress is being made, but we're still only maybe 50 percent — nowhere near full service," said Nancy Snyder, a NJ Transit spokeswoman. "We really thank our customers for their patience, and we have to ask them for more."